The SMR Business Meeting Study

The GOAL of this SMR study group is to recommend to the members standard practices for conducting our business. We hope that our thoughtful recommendations will be adopted.

We meet to discuss the various topics associated with the many aspects of SMR group business. Presently we meet on the first Sunday and the subsequent Wednesday of each month. We meet at 9:00 am Eastern (after the regular SMR meeting). Every SMR member is welcome to participate.

Our challenge is to find a way into our task – evaluating the components of a group conducting business. Where do we begin to assess and build our conceptions of a recommended practice and process? With a script? The timing of the business meeting? Setting the tone/creating the space? Our own experiences? The examples of other groups? Here are just a few of the topics we are exploring:

The timing of the Business meeting
Making audio recordings of our meeting
Standard agreements about comportment
A Business Meeting Script.
- Readings? Prayers? The time frame of the opening/welcome
- Incorporating silence – meditations/ Higher Power moments
The Proposal process – How do we make motions or raise suggestions?
Utilizing tools, such as our website and member survey abilities

Throughout this experience, the study group finds personal benefit in successfully achieving consensus and in producing a comprehensive written product. The lessons from our working together can be carried outward into other interactions in our lives – familial, social and business. Underneath it all, a business or committee meeting is a space in which we exercise our emotional growth and recovery.